


smelling of junipers

by InfiniteCalm



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Competent Finn, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, I promise, Just not yet, Love, M/M, Pairing May Change, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Leia, Religion, Rey is Very Capable, Trigger warning:, be careful, but sad, effects of torture, it'll all be alright, not too graphic, poe will be happy, recovery fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2018-09-15 04:35:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9219257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfiniteCalm/pseuds/InfiniteCalm
Summary: "He wakes up and feels a change in the light and he feels that his skin is dry, he feels blood on his hands and wonders if it is just his hand that is bleeding or if somewhere else is, that he can’t feel. I wonder I wonder, he thinks idly, not knowing what he is wondering. "Poe Dameron is captured. And then, comes home.Read the tags, guys.





	1. brightest of the planets is mars

**Author's Note:**

> Bonjour, tout le monde. This fic is much darker than I usually write- cw for torture (not graphically described, but it happens) and the aftermath of torture (PTSD and similar.) I don't write graphic stuff, though. The pairing tags will probably change cos I'm indecisive, and Finn makes a definite appearance, I promise. The first chapter is by far the worst.   
> Anyway, if you're not scared off by that then... enjoy, I guess?  
> Title of fic and chapter from Go or Go Ahead by Rufus Wainwright.

He’d thought the first time he’d been captured had been bad (not that anyone else needed to know that, of course, it had been a matter between him and The General), but it had nothing on this. For one thing, the first time, they both knew what information was needed; and Ren had tried to get it, and Dameron had tried not to give it to him.   
But now, he doesn’t know where Skywalker is, or who Amina is, or why they have been attacking an empty planet for three months. He can’t make it stop. He’s been saying anything. He’s been saying everything. They must know, by know, that it’s all lies. 

When they leave the concrete is colourful. He sees reds and blues and greens and somehow this is alright with him, somehow this spinning kaleidoscope of his vision is better than what went before. You need your eyes to fly, his rational brain tells him, sometimes, when the spinning stops and there’s nothing left but the thin darkness. This is worrying. But there’s no point in panicking. There’s probably no need to worry about ever being a pilot again. They’ll get bored or they’ll get a new more useful prisoner or they’ll carry themselves away one day. There is sometimes a smell that creeps in under the door and clings to the smooth walls and then eventually it fades. But he’s not stupid and he’s spent his whole adulthood in a war and he knows what it is. The first day he smelled it, he had not believed it; it seemed to bad to be true.

At first, the hardest part was the pain, and the relentlessness of it; the fact that he began to know more about himself than he ever wanted to, information for which he has no use, a full bodied fear and desperation, a willingness not to get hurt again, or to try and work out an escape plan. At first, the time alone was, if not good, then at least less bad. At first, he had thought of the General, and of Finn, he had tried to will away the bad things by remembering that at least he was loved; people were probably out looking for him and they were probably worried. He was a good pilot who flew important missions. 

Now, he knows that the time he spends alone- long stretches of it, sometimes, long, unyielding, empty dark with no voices, no nothing- is almost as bad as when the people are there. The hardest thing after the first while was the time. He had no way of knowing what day, month, hour it was. It was very difficult to tear himself away from clocks and balances, but now, at least he can say that it doesn’t much matter if he’s asleep in the day or the night, just as long as he can sleep and just as long as it is not bright all the time.   
They still ask him questions, perhaps just to see what he can make up, this time. He sings his old songs every day. He only lets himself sing five at a time because he doesn’t want to not want to sing them anymore. Other ways of keeping his mind included walking around his cell 50 times, back when he could walk. Now, he uses his arms to push himself up. He holds himself up at the top for a whole one-reb-el-ee-on before he falls. He does sit ups. He pretends to fly to Yavin IV using different starting points- how would you get there if you couldn’t use hyperspace? What stars would you pass? Name every component of an X-wing.

He remembers novels from school and he remembers his maths. He keeps busy by tapping out rhythms onto the cold cold floor of the cell. The mattress he has is soaked in things that don’t smell nice. He has a cough that won’t go away. He is sure that it must rain because sometimes the people come in with damp hair and they drip water onto the floor, but he can’t hear anything outside even though he would like to hear it, would like to hear it just one more time, like he used to listen, in the dream that took place so long ago and so far away that it may as well not be real at all.

*

He wakes up and feels a change in the light and he feels that his skin is dry, he feels blood on his hands and wonders if it is just his hand that is bleeding or if somewhere else is that he can’t feel. I wonder I wonder, he thinks idly, not knowing what he is wondering. 

The door opens and he blinks into the light, squeezing his eyes but forcing himself to open them, because beyond the figure in the doorway is something that he has deduced is the sun, through a window, and everything the door opens, it might be his last chance to look at the sun, and although it is not his sun or his sky it is a sun, and he believes that all suns are good, and all planets started out as places of paradise. Yavin’s religion is older than Skywalker’s, though there are debates about that, sorry there were debates about that a long time ago, and his parents used to laugh and say it didn’t matter they were converts anyway, but Poe never really saw why it had to be so zero sum- and then. look at where his dual belief systems have left him now, so maybe they were onto something there after all. 

-Hello, Mr Dameron. I trust you slept well. Sorry to wake you, but you know, it is late afternoon.

He is unnerved by this knowledge and tries not to show it, and he also knows that it is somehow grossly inhuman to not know the time, or to not know or care where the blood on your hands comes from. He thinks that he has forgotten what it feels like to be full. 

-I’m sure you know what I’m here to ask, so I’m going to cut to the chase.

There is a bright blue light and a strange heat that makes the dry skin around his face drier. It takes a minute before he puts all the pieces of the jigsaw together and realises that it’s a weapon of some kind. He wonders why they’ve brought it here at all, what on earth the point of it is. He can’t defend himself. He has nothing, no information that could possibly still be useful. 

-Where is Skywalker?

All along in the dream that was real and the homes he used to make for himself there were people that loved him and there were people he loved and although he doesn’t love them anymore because there is only so much that can survive here and only so much he can keep with him (lungs, heart beating, eyes, memories of rain) but that fact exists, and it is a comforting thought, now. A nice thought.

-I know you don’t know.  
-I’ve been telling and telling you that.  
-Why on Earth are you still here, if you don’t have anything to say to us?

He doesn’t answer because that is the safest way to operate. 

-If you can’t help, you can leave! Look! The door’s wide open! Just walk outside and leave! If you walk out of here, nobody will stop you from hailing a rebel ship and going home. I promise you.

The person stands to one side and lets him see the sun, really look at it through the doorway and the window, and it’s really beautiful. It’s properly and gorgeously lovely.

He stays on the ground because he has no choice. He can’t move. He couldn’t even if it wasn’t so obviously a game. Still, in a way, it’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for him; there is already less water in the air of the cell, the stench of it is beginning to wane, he door, he sees, is a dull grey colour and he never knew that before.

-Who is Amina?

He says nothing. He remembers suddenly how wide the universe is. How stars look when they are new. How stars look before they are new. What a privilege to be given, a new star, a lovely and gorgeous new star, a place that one day might build a new planet and a new, clean people, after all this ugliness has died away. And he has been around for the building blocks. He might have seen the galaxy’s first peaceful system and not known it. How lucky.

-If you don’t answer, you will be in direct violation of code one-one-six-nine and will face appropriate punishment.

He has nothing more to say. 

What a waste of a sun like that to shine down on a place like this.

There is a moment where everything thinks it’s going to happen and then there’s a frantic being from somebody’s belt and someone hits him and he falls unconscious again.

When he wakes up he is alone but the door is still open and there are sounds like there are lots of planes leaving. He doesn’t know what’s happening but the sun is still outside. The window has broken and the door is open and he thinks, if I drag myself to the window I will feel the heat of the sun and that will make me feel better, even if I die, that is a good way to go, a way my father might be proud of, he died trying to get to the light, Kes, he lasted a long time and he only wanted to get to the light. 

So he pulls himself along with his arms- not that his legs don’t work, exactly, they move and he can feel them and everything, just that they won’t support his weight after- but anyway, not important, he can still hear a lot of noise outside, shouting and planes and the occasional pew pew of a gun- a gun? And it’s been so so so long since he heard anything so loud, but he’s made up his mind now and the light is making his eyes water, although they are constantly watering, and he thinks that they are watering a bit more than usual, and he realises then that he is crying and this makes him stop for a moment but then he presses on, and there- sounds that quick boots make, but out of time with each other, and then he pulls himself out of the cell and there is a shout and the boots stop pounding and he looks up but all he sees is a silhouette until the silhouette bends down to touch his face, and it’s Jess, Jess is the silhouette and she’s here and he’s on the ground and crying and filthy.

-I NEED BACKUP, someone screams I NEED BACKUP SECTOR ALPHA NINE, I’VE FOUND- GENERAL, I’VE FOUND POE DAMERON, I’VE FOUND HIM, HE’S HERE, HE- HOLY HOLY HOLY SHIT WHAT THE-

He reaches a hand up to touch her face, the usual colours all circling around each other, the motion of her face hard to take in, she gathers him up and holds him to her chest and he breaths shakily and she rubs his back, saying, oh it’s alright now, what have they done to you, it’s ok, I have you, I have you, I have you and after a while she speaks again, to someone who is not there, and then she hands him to a man who is scarcely taller than he was himself and she is right behind you, right behind you, we’re heading back to base and we’ll fix you up, you’ll be fine, you’ll be safe.


	2. what a world my parents gave me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Oh What a World by Rufus Wainwright  
> well, i said I would end up changing the relationship tag, and OH LOOK.  
> cw for plane crashing + grief + brief mentions of guns

Poe wakes up and falls back asleep several times, which everyone is assured is totally normal, more worrying if he didn’t, and really his body is fine, just malnourished, which is an easy, if time consuming fix, and the cast will be on his leg for a bit longer, but then it will be fine- the wonders of technology, eh? He’ll be fine, everyone, back to work, we’re not quite there yet! Not you, of course. You can stay. He’d like to have you there. Has someone told the General? And his Father? No? Well, get on that, someone tell the father that the son is not dead, as previously supposed, that the son is, in fact, very much alive, and soon will be running around and playing the guitar just like he used to, in the garden, in the conservatory when it rained and the noise would be percussion.

A war, in its final act- beginning, middle, crisis, end. We are coming to the end of the crisis and so this is the beginning of the end of the whole thing- time to start wondering about governing and finding homes and the education that a whole generation of teachers, doctors, guitar players need that will be missing. Poe has come back to them this point- a turning point. His return may as well be an anacrusis. 

Anyway it’s too easy to just fall back asleep, and the bed is so soft! He feels like he must be flying. He’s warm. That’s the main thing, he feels clean. And then he sleeps again, and wakes up, and he’s safe, and Lord, it’s bright, but never too bright- in fact, he remembers things being white not yellow, but beside the point- actually, beside the bed- is 

“Hello,” he says- his voice skates over his vowels and it’s sore to talk.

“Poe”, his father says. He looks like he’s trying to decide what to say next but that’s not necessarily easy. Poe supposes, in a cloudlike way, as he begins to slip under again, that it’s not exactly easy for him to know what to say either, and he knows he should try to keep his eyes open because his father has maybe come a long way. But he can’t stay awake, he’s just too tired and the bed is just too nice and there is light, just not too much, perfect, perfect.  
“Sorry,” he whispers, but his father shakes his head and smiles.  
“No, no,” he says softly, tracing circles in his palm like you would to a sick child, or one that’s asleep. “I don’t mind. Whatever it is, I don’t mind.”

*

Kes Dameron had been playing the piano when the news that his son had crashed and probably died on impact came in. The boy that often cropped up in the rare letters he received from Poe had delivered it himself. This struck Kes as an unkindness to the poor thing- he was shaking. This above his own pain, which had been sudden and absolute, the kind of shock and horror that only comes from the worst possible news. He’s dead. He’s dead.

“Technically, missing,” the boy had said. 

But Kes was in the same army that Poe was in and he only ever saw three people come back from the missing, and it was a horrible thought to think but maybe it was good that it had been quick and he died doing something that he at least believed in. At the minute that is the most comforting thing he has, that his son is probably dead. That his son being dead is the positive outcome is a thought that is singularly vile. His son is dead. His son, his only… all that love that was wrapped up in and with and around him, all those smiles and all that arrogance and that wit, and all the music- God, the music, the way Poe had always understood it- but how could he be dead? How can he be dead?

“You must be Finn”, he says, because that is all that comes to mind. “He talks about you all the time.”

“We were good friends” the boy says, in a way that makes the label feel ill-fitting. 

“Do you have a place to stay, tonight?” Kes asks, even though he would rather not have to sit through this night with someone he doesn’t know, would rather see this boy off planet than anything else- he doesn’t wish him ill (you couldn’t, not with a manner as polite and sorrowful as he has) but he also can’t stand to see anyone now. 

“Yes, I… I had better get going,” the boy says. “There’s- it’s… tonight, it’s the big- look. My ship. I- I’m very sorry, Mr Dameron, but I have to go.”

“May the Force guide and save you,” Kes says, automatically, shading his eyes and watching the already retreating form of the boy that his son loved and feeling something once liquid and soft begin to harden and become cold, and there is a level of disbelief- there are people who have never done a stroke of work, who have never contributed, never wanted to contribute anything to this life- and

But it’s no good, because for some reason he goes to the end of the garden and looks over the little overgrown gate and feels like he has always felt when he stands here like this, like he is waiting for his barefoot son to come running down the road with his schoolbag and his half eaten packed lunch, singing or shouting at his friends and smiling like he always smiles, he has always smiled, especially when, at aged nine, he realised he could jump over the fence. There is a little scar on his shin from where he didn’t make it one time, and fell over onto it. He didn’t cry- all that much- but it had bled a lot, and his friends from school were all horrified. But Poe just cleaned it and put a plaster on it, calmer than Kes could ever have believed, than Kes ever was at that age. 

Kes stands where he is, lets his head bow, and then the tears come, although, like his son, he’s never had much use for crying. The sun behind him is strong, warm on his neck when the rest of him is cold. L’ulo comes walking by later, and he doesn’t need to tell her what’s happened. She’s been afraid of this for years and so she’s been preparing in advance.  
__

Finn has not been gunning for very long. He isn’t the best, yet, but for someone with no practical experience before was doing very well and everyone was proud of him but nobody really trusted him- and that was alright because if he were in their shoes he’d feel exactly the same way, and anyway it’s not like he’s alone.  
Poe is a big child. He has come to learn that much. He made his own plane look cooler than everyone else’s because he likes things that are different colours and go “zwrrooom!” Finn does not admit it but he is happy that Poe has done this. When Poe and Finn are out on the same mission, it’s easy to keep track of him. Being one of nature’s optimists, it’s just a pleasant way of keeping himself focused, and not a way of constantly keeping tabs on if he is alive or not. 

The pilots of the fighters he works on are usually understanding about this although most people have counselled him that it’s usually better to have a lover on the ground, away from danger, where you know they’ll be safe, and therefore you won’t be distracted. This seems vaguely unfair to Finn; whenever Poe is fighting and he is grounded, he thinks he’ll go out of his mind with worry. His friend Karla says that after a while you get used to it. Finn doesn’t think he could. 

They are fighting and then the battle ends but one of Poe’s engines is smoking. In silence, Finn watches as it falls, falls, falls, down to the ground. He looks away as it hits the ground, meets the eye of the pilot flying away. The woman is white and staring at him.

“I’m so sorry.” She says.

Finn does not breath for a whole minute. The fighter keeps flying, out of the atmosphere.

“We should have gone back to get him,” he says.

“They would have killed both of us. He wouldn’t have survived that fall.” 

“He’s survived worse,” Finn says softly. “Please, can we go back?”

She looks at him and her face softens. He must look awful.

“Alright,” she says. She radios in and tells everyone what they’re going to do. They fly back and low over the tree tops, and-

There’s the wreck of the ship, but Christ, those are- 

“First Order troops!” The pilot whispers. 

One of the Stormtroopers begins to fire at the fighter but he’s not a very good shot. 

“BB-8!” Finn exclaims- down below, the droid is spinning in circles. Without sound, it could be saying anything at all. They fly lower and lower, lower than is safe, but Finn doesn’t see a body. The Stormtroopers have scattered, in expectation of another crash, maybe, and BB-8 has attached himself to the fighter and they are soaring up, up, up again. They let the droid in. He’s very upset.

Finn realises that they can’t have a proper funeral. The cockpit is silent but for the radio and the occasional sniff from the pilot.

*

It always comes a surprise to Finn that there are some people who live lives without any major, life-changing surprises, who can expect things to go one way and then it more or less corresponds to that expectation. This is not how his own life has gone, at all. 

He is sitting beside his resurrected Poe and watching his chest go up and gently down- his face has completely changed its shape. His wrist looks breakable-  
actually, all of him looks breakable, but not nearly as bad as when he came in first, a fortnight ago. He’d been dirty then, and now he was clean, and he’d had a rattle in his chest, and now he was breathing deeply, and he’d been yellow, but now he was a more human colour. 

He hasn’t been very lucid yet at all, unable to even have a small conversation. They’ve kept him under sedation because they want him- well, to be honest, they don’t know how he will be after he wakes up, and at least if he is perfectly well in body they can then set about establishing what the problem is with his mind.

Finn doesn’t want to even think about it. 

Rey peeps her had around the door and smiles briefly. Since Skywalker came back, with her standing just a bit behind him, proud, her smiles have been brief flashes of things, the closeness she once had with him a little bit more restrained now. She doesn’t know how to act around this. He holds Poe’s hand, motions for her to come in, but she shakes her head.

“Come on in,” Finn says. “He likes having people here.”

Finn does not know if that’s still true. He, more than anyone, knows what probably went on. Kes Dameron is a lovely man, by all accounts and by Finn’s own experiences, but he is expecting his son to wake up, and Finn doesn’t know if that’s going to be the case.

“Oh, no” Rey says. “I’m really quite busy, you know how it is, but it’s good to see that you’re alright, I haven’t seen you in such a long time, I was missing you.”

“The war machine continues.” Finn says. “I have a mission tomorrow afternoon.” 

“Are you free tomorrow morning?”

He shakes his head and looks back at Poe in the bed. She nods and shrugs.

“Cool,” she says, “I’ll come here, then.”

He knows she doesn’t like the hospital, has resisted every invitation to stay with Poe since he arrived back. She’s standing a bit taller and stronger than before she went away. Every time she leaves him she comes back different and Finn wishes that she would give him some warning. 

“That’d be nice” he says, and smiles, and then Poe stirs and murmurs something, and he’s not proud of it, but Rey is briefly forgotten, because what if he’s-  
And when he turns back, she waves goodbye quickly and leaves.

“Finn,” Poe says.

“How are you feeling?” Finn asks, holding Poe’s hand and trying not to smile encouragingly, which he feels might be annoying-or worse, patronising- but he fails, and he is smiling. Poe doesn’t reply beyond a pronounced blink, but he replies; and that’s the main thing.  
He stays up for a long time; longer than he should. He needs sleep.

*

Rey found out when she saw Finn after he came back from the mission. His shock was enough to make her dizzy. And she’d always thought that she’d know when it happened, always thought that Poe was a close enough friend that she would at least feel that ripple that comes with loss. The fact that she didn’t fell anything wasn’t indicative of anything. So Luke says. There’d been no body but Luke said that most deaths in war didn’t have bodies. That in real life, there were no shocking twists or surprise reveals. Han’s body was never found, and so Poe Dameron’s, unfortunately, would not be either. He said, “it’s a shame, is what it is,” and left her to go to a meeting she wasn’t invited to.  
It’s more than a shame. She really liked him. He had a nice smile and he was kind to her and he even trusted Finn, right off the bat. He knew right from wrong.

Everyone on base loved him because he used to sing all the time. They used to do these things where they’d get together and sing and some people would start and then they’d say “Poe, Poe!” and he’d pretend like he wasn’t flattered and only wanted to listen these days, but then he’d stand up to stretch himself out and say “now, I haven’t been working on this for a very long time” and sing a new and gorgeous song, every time. She doesn’t know anything about love, or even loss; or at the time, she didn’t. She understood the songs as he sung them.

The mood changed the day they came back like that, shocked and crying. Finn went in to break the news to the general and she can still see the way the door closed; how when the General came out she looked older and somehow shorter. They had known each other for Poe’s whole life. Luke had been there too. Luke had asked after him on the third day of her training. She said, “he seems good. He’s very nice.” Luke had smiled and rolled his eyes slightly. Of course, he seemed to be saying.

The mood changed after he went down. People stopped singing. There was a sense of heaviness about the place.

Rey had been running around the track when his ship landed in. The pain had been visible, like the sun shining in her eyes. She’d squeezed them shut but to no avail; when it stopped she opened them to find that she’d dropped to her knees. 

And now that she’s here it’s like a buzzing at the base of her skull; a loud noise without the sound. Finn is awake still. She tries sending him off to sleep, tells him that she’ll wait here and that he’s deep under, that he won’t wake up.

She holds his hand and feels the way his heart moves.

“Finn,” she says. “You’re going to have to get some sleep if you want to survive tomorrow.”

She loves him for this stubbornness and the way he’d give himself a sleepless night so that she could rest. She loves him for his way of loving her- his attention to the details of herself, his interruptions to the stories that she tells- (how did you feel? Were you OK?) and because he musters in her such swells of fondness, she will stay with this second hand pain. So she rolls her eyes and tells him that she has meditation to do and reading to catch up on, and anyway she is a nocturnal creature, these days.  
He leaves. She concentrates.

*

Leia wakes up. Something is- she needs to get down to sickbay.

She quietly dresses herself. Opening the door, she finds her brother walking down the corridor, although he is not so urgent about it, and has not changed out of his pyjamas. 

“It’s Rey,” he whispers. “She’s helping with the Dameron boy. I’m going down to look after her.”

It’s better not to argue. And if it helps Poe, well then, she can’t very well say no: Kes Dameron is unable to sleep in his quarters, he’s so shook up about it. What they did- what they signed off on- Pava had been white.

“Nice to see you continue making an effort with your appearance,” she says, as they set off together.

*

His mother liked to hold him and kiss the top of his head when she talked to her friends. They had better caff when he was small; the smell was strong and his mother used to smack her lips and sigh when she finished a cup. He is there now. The saturation is turned up full, so that all the greens are very green, and the sky hurts his eyes when he looks at it.

She was always larger than life. She used to wear her hair tied up when she cleaned the house or the plane- she hated cleaning the house, hated it more than Poe hated it. Poe had forgotten. She read him stories every night, but the more he thinks about it the less sure he is that that’s true. Maybe she just had a chat with him instead, maybe she answered his questions or told him jokes or blew raspberries on his stomach. She had no voice for singing but she is singing now; and it isn’t her. She would not have known this song. He wrote it himself when he was seventeen.

His father comes walking out of the house into the garden and she lets go of Poe with one arm to wave him over. 

Now he is on a beach somewhere far away; he remembers it clearly but his mother is not here. He was never there with her.

Somewhere far above, stars are wheeling overhead.  
This was the beach where he first shot and killed a soldier from The Other Side and it had made him throw up when he thought about it. He does not think about it now. He does not wonder, now, if Finn had been in the wrong place at the wrong time if he would have been shot because there is no point in that. This is a war and he cannot stand by and let innocent boys have their mothers killed.

He's back in the cell. In the dark.

Horror begins to pool in his stomach. That familiar deadness- survive by dying and letting your lungs breath without you- is beginning to flood his fingers and up his arms, and he thinks suddenly as the pain begins again that he would much rather not feel anything ever again. He can hear music and he has no use for it.  
There is no use for anything, these days. He sees Finn and somewhere in his head it says, you love him, remember? Or his father, and it says, daddy. But there used to colour and strings with these faces, there used to trumpets or cellos or sometimes just soft warmth with these faces and now there is dull nothing, a concrete level feeling of nothing. If this is forever- he dimly registers there are no more walls around him, but a soft yellow light instead- can you imagine not being able to love? He’d be a monster. He is a monster, something dimly approaching human, something that does things it copies from others, but he no longer understands why or what point anything has, anymore. They have taken the heart out of him and kept it until it burned away to almost nothing. He can feel the place where it once was and cannot feel anything else. Finn looks at him like he is a miracle and instead he will get a stone of a once-person. 

“May the Force protect and guide you. May you find your home.”

Poe feels the voice more than hears it. 

“May the Force protect and guide you. May you find your home.”

It feels like a sun- like the sun, back home, hot on the backs on his hand and on his neck and calves- but gentler, somehow, cool, and he wants it to sound again. He misses the voice. It’s familiar.

“May the Force protect and guide you. May you find your home.”

It sounds like his mother, he realises, those are her indentations and her vowels, her depth and breath, it sounds like his mother but it is not his mother, and he wants to see her  
and for her to tell him that everything is alright and lovely but she can’t and she can’t and he wants her to meet Finn and for her to say that she likes him and that he seems nice, he wants her to see him fly and show her that he lived his life in part to honour hers. 

“May the Force protect and guide you. May you find your home.”

May you go home and may she be there… she will not be there. And yet, Finn, who never met her, carries that same swagger, and his father, who would not dream of remarrying, loves him as much as anyone ever can, and the people that you love, as they say, leave parts of themselves with you, so that the music in your head is also the music that played in  
hers, and the way she spoke loudly above people she did not like, and the swooping joy of flying, and they are you and they are her and you miss her.  
You are a child of the sun and The Force will see you home, and you miss her and that's ok.

Poe thinks, I’m ready to wake up now.  
He feels a hand, steady and dry, gripping his own.  
Poe thinks, I love.


	3. i don't know what it is

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from I Don't Know What it is by Rufus Wainwright

When Finn woke up after his back injury, Poe was gone on a mission, and he didn’t come back for three weeks. Finn learned how to be a person who knew what art was and how to tell a joke without Poe there at all; when he came back Finn was waiting with a whole new way of holding himself. The main problem was not cadences or colloquialisms, (because they were both easy to imitate and relatively uncomplicated) but rather it was a problem with references. He still does not know songs or famous holovids; he cannot read without his mind wandering. Asides from not having the free time to dedicate to such things, it’s difficult to find them, and anyway it’s no longer a problem, because he has learned what people sound like when they make references or do imitations, and he can gauge from the people around him if they are good (laugh) or bad (groan). 

There had been a time when Poe would go hours singing at him so that Finn would at least know the songs everyone sang; so that he wouldn’t feel left out at funerals or weddings or when drunk people got maudlin. Poe was prone to fits of melancholy himself. He would sit and not drink (that was how you knew it was bad, he wouldn’t drink and nobody would talk about why) and sing under his breath, God help them all if someone asked him for a song because it always ended in something sad. This was new for Finn. There were a few songs in the First Order base. Some of them were government mandated and everyone had to sing them, and they were all about the glory and painlessness of an ordered universe. They were not emotional- or maybe they were not individually emotional. You couldn’t help but feel energised by the tunes and the words- glory to our martyrs, ye have not died in vain, that kind of thing. There were others sung to the same tunes that used language that was not condoned, usually about the food or the smell of your bunkmates’ feet. Different to what Poe sang. Poe sang about heartbreak and about being in the dark, not knowing who was there, or if there even was anyone there, and he sang about the changes that would surely come and he sang about leaving home and being unable to go back. When he sang them you believed him, or Finn did anyway.

When he was happier he sang silly songs about stars and dancing and he also sang songs that sounded sad but weren’t. The latter were about love. Finn does not, cannot, understand how a song can be written. He has never tried and when he asked about it, Poe had shrugged and said that he couldn’t explain it, that sometimes he just woke up with a tune in his head, and the words just came naturally to fit the tune. He said that it was like there was something inside him when he couldn’t immediately write it down. Once, he said, he had a physical pain in his hand because there was something especially good and he was in a meeting so he couldn’t sing it out. It sounded melodramatic. It was melodramatic, in fairness, it was completely ridiculous, but then, what did you expect from someone who wore their hair that floppy?

In the early days when Finn thought that probably all friendships were like his and Poe’s had become (there had been too much mortal peril for him to develop the same sense of desperation whenever Rey had to leave- she had not returned yet, then, so he had only known her for two weeks even though they were the most important two weeks of his life and she was the most important person in his life) he used to look at Poe when Poe would talk and he would feel giddy. His stories were exciting and his laugh always seemed to take him by surprise, and Finn would just wonder how in all the universe someone so shiny could be at the same time so kind, and it would be captivating and Finn could not have taken the smile off his face- it was surely a cause for joy, that Poe Dameron existed and loved. Finn basked in it, the wonder of this small miracle. It made him fizz on the inside. He had never fizzed before, never been allowed to- he remembers the General laughed out loud once, when she saw them together, but had not explained what it was that was so funny, and Poe had not explained the blush or the way he had to look down to the lower right. Finn had seen his eyelashes, long and dark as they were, and thought, so beautiful, so beautiful. In hindsight that might have been the oh moment; the follow up smile that could only be described as bashful was more a moment of communication. He knows that they’ve never really talked about it, and that some people think that that’s unusual. Finn doesn’t know. Talking about things is not always easy.

Finn remembers this when they are en route to the weapons relay. If they manage to take out even a third of these ships, then the First Order will be left without the TIE fighters that they need. They are close, so close to folding now and Finn wants, desperately, for this all to be over. His heart is spent and exhausted. He knows why he is fighting. Somehow, he is no longer sure if this will remain sufficient, if he can drag up the energy he needs to keep on at it, keep on at it, for a political system that he can’t even envision. What does a peace look like? All his life has been lived through and because of war. If they do win and he is alive, he will be a relic, a story that children tell, or perhaps, depending on the victor, a cautionary tale. This is at odds to who he feels he could be- would have been, without all this mud. He thinks if left to his own devices he would have led an unremarkable, quiet life; lived in the benefits that past wars granted him, and been content to love the first Good Man that came along. Maybe that would have left him with some burning Poe shaped hole in his soul or something. 

He feels Poe in every part of him, and no amount of distance or death can ever undo that: it is done, now, there is nothing left for him to say, and Leia says that she knows the feeling. It’s a bitch. Sometimes it feels more like a sorrow than a blessing. He has absorbed and adored Poe; sometimes he wonders if there is anything left of who he was before at all, if he can ever go back. But he also is not sure he can possibly know love at all; it changes so much and has no many different shades.  
Unnecessarily dramatic, he thinks, rolling his eyes. Take out the ships and go home.

Poe is at home and he is awake now, and he wants to drink some water. He hasn’t had any clean water like they have here in a very long time and although it is not exactly a luxury, it is the only thing that he has been looking forward to. The med-droid comes back with a tiny cup half full of clear water which is only enough to make him feel thirstier and his mood sours and he clenches his fists and makes himself count to ten. 

He’d shouted at his father earlier. Kes hadn’t done anything. Poe’s voice wasn’t ready and had disappeared halfway through the sentence. He had picked up a piece of paper and balled it up and thrown it onto the ground beside his father’s feet.

“It’s a note from Finn,” Kes had said, with infuriating patience, when he unrumpled it. “He’ll be back this afternoon.”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Poe snapped. Kes had left, then, in silence, which made Poe feel sad and horribly guilty, and then angry at his father for making him feel guilty, and then sad again. He hasn’t come back around. Poe wants to get up and walk it off, let his muscles burn for a while so he doesn’t have to think anymore but no, the Force forfend that we let someone up out of his bed to walk around!

He realises with a heavy acceptance that the very motion of sitting up and rearranging his pillows is singularly exhausting, and that if he did get up he would not be able to support himself with his arms. He does not want to stay here; he’s always been bad at staying in one place, and now it just seems cruel. There are people outside this room that would love to see him. He would like to see them. And now it’s his own self that is making that an impossibility. He thinks this is probably a prime example of irony. He thinks poets that he liked in his melodramatic youth would also appreciate the symbolism of his own body being the final prison; but even though he is fighting in a war that is quite literally good versus evil, (or at least that’s the cut and thrust- Poe feels he has given up some moral authority, seeing as shoot on sight has been a motto of his for a few years now) this is a little too much for him now, and he would rather focus on realities. 

“When does my physio start?” Poe asks the med droid that is doing its rounds.

“Dameron comma Poe, query: physical therapy. Running…” The Droid replies, which means it’s at the very latest a model three. The last model announced before Poe went away   
was a model 600. “Dameron comma Poe, physical therapy due to begin: in four solar cycles. Note. Dameron comma Poe should not be given clearance to begin physical therapy before the stated date. Thank you for your query. I am here to improve your quality of life.”

Life, Poe thinks, sourly. Don’t talk to me about life.

After lunch, and still no-one has come to talk or report or even to check if he is not dead. He misses BB-8. He misses his father. 

He was around nineteen and had just graduated with flying colours. There had been three months where the world around him slowly started to grow scarier. This was in large part because the news holos they sent around base every so often would not stop showing footage of a very shouty angry man with ginger hair; saying things that the people who remembered, remembered. Poe remembers hearing the argument that people like him- this was shouted at him across a dirty cantina so he is not totally sure about what part of him what like him, but anyway, people like him’d be out once the First Order came in and started- well, Poe’s then boyfriend had started a fight on the other side of the room and so he’d missed the rest, but statements like that are depressingly easy to parse and even easier to mimic. In a way, actually, the guy was right. Look at where he is now.  
But back to the past, a place Poe tries not to dwell in because there is little intrinsic value in nostalgia. He was nineteen, graduated into a galaxy that felt less and less steady in its alliances every day, and getting lost in it all. He remembers the way his tiny quarters became difficult to leave. He really did have everything he needed there, was the thing, and he wasn’t yet twenty, so people kind of laughed it off as youthful laziness. He’d thought so too. It wasn’t as if he was polishing off bottles of wine by himself or crying himself to sleep or anything. He had friends and they sometimes came to visit and all, and he’d just split up from the then boyfriend, so of course he was bound to be a little sad. So on, so forth. The quiet fact of the loneliness was easy to ignore, especially while he had his guitar, and then one day he woke up and couldn’t move and time seemed so slow and- well, he’d had to fly a mission and although he pulled it off without a hitch, the cockpit just seemed so alien and strange that he barely knew what his hands were doing.  
This feeling feels like a greyer version of that. He knows it. He wishes he didn’t. The sky had never seemed so heavy as it felt in those three months.

He has never told his father.

“Dameron, it’s good to see you’re awake.” The General says. He hadn’t even noticed she was there.

“For a given value of awake,” He tells her, and she laughs. 

“Well,” She says. “Nobody’s expecting you to win the war on day one.”

“Not exactly day one,” he points out softly. Not even year one.

“True.” She says, lowering herself into a chair. “That is true.”

She seems the same as ever, from far away. Go on, she always seems to be saying disdainfully. Go on, do it. See what happens next. He’s always loved her a little bit for that. He is   
(was) certainly self-assured (or that was one word for it), but not in the same way. He thinks probably her being royalty and having nothing left to lose probably helps. He himself is struggling to find a reason why staying here is even worthwhile anymore. She has not, outwardly at least, succumbed to the same kind of thoughts.   
Close up she looks properly exhausted. 

Poe tries to smile.

“Stop,” She says. “Don’t do that until you mean it, for Kriff’s sake, child.”

“Sorry,” he mutters. 

She sighs in the chair like he’s being stupid- he’s only being a little bit stupid, OK, not even stupid enough for her to hit him gently round the back of the head (she probably won’t do that anymore, of course). She swings up, puts her feet on his bed, and leans back.  
“I used to do this all the time after the last war, when Luke would have his little episodes.” She says, talking about it as though it were a happier time- he supposes it was a happier time, which is a Hell of a thing to say when you’re talking about your brother’s debilitating illness. The sorted him out, after a while; or they got the med balance right, or something. Poe only knows vaguely. The illness was never named in his hearing. He thinks maybe if it had been finally said out loud maybe nineteen would not have been such a time at all. Or maybe that’s just him being stupid. These days it’s difficult to tell what’s real and what he misremembers. 

He feels a short burst of something he doesn’t like shoot through his chest. Oh. But it’s better than he thought it might be, and the General is here to talk, so that’s something. So long as he doesn’t freak out. A whole conversation! It’s been so long since he had a conversation with someone he cared about. It feels like sugar and it feels yellow he can taste it at the back of his throat. It’s a little sad how much he is looking forward to this; how much he relishes the weight of the General’s feet at the end of his bed.  
“Are you here to debrief, sir?” He asks, because although she is sitting fairly casually she looks like she’s just waiting to do business with him. Which he likes. Although part of him really wants his father there too, to have something to hold on to- or Finn. Kriff. Finn. 

“Whatever gave me away?” She asks, drily. “There’s a few things you need to know, and a few things I want your opinion on.”

“Well, shoot.” Poe mutters. “There I was thinking I’d have some time off to recover.”

“You wouldn’t know what to do with time off,” Leia says, but it’s all smile and no bite.

“I wouldn’t know,” Poe says. “I’ve never had any. I can picture myself, lying on a beach with a book-” and Finn, his treacherous brain supplies- “you know. Sleeping.”

“Sleeping.” Leia says, dry as a bone. “Yes. Reading a book and sleeping.”

But there are things to discuss, and the General imparts their situation pretty well, and it’s better than the droid would suggest. He says as much. The General shakes her head and Poe senses that perhaps there is a story behind that; well, whatever it is, the thing is unbearable. Finn is on a mission. Poe is grateful for that; sometimes he is taken aback by his own thoughts. Apparently Rey was here last night, doing something to his head so that he’d feel better, or something.

“She was worried.” The General, who is sometimes called Leia, says. “She’s very sensitive. More sensitive than Luke says he was at that age, but then Luke is so dramatic that you really have to take everything he says with a pinch of salt. I think she’s about the same.”

“Careful,” Poe says. “You don’t want to get too fond of her.” This is a mistake he has made with exceptional young friends before. They all die, sooner or later- they die unremarkable deaths. Every death is unremarkable but some lack the dignity they should have, like most deaths in war do. And sometimes unremarkable people start wars. It’s miserable but also one has to get on with it.

God, maybe this is why you don’t take time off. He’s starting to think about things again, oh hooray. So much time and effort gone in to ignoring the story.   
But then, without that, he wouldn’t- without that, there’d be no way of actually. You know. Breathing.

Breathing. _Oh, God_.

“What did you want to ask?” he asks, but actually he doesn’t know how clear his head is.

“Oh. No. Here’s your Dad,” the General says. “I’ll be back tomorrow, if I can make Finn go away.”

He sees Kes linger at the doorway, the sun lighting him up from behind, a window closed in the hallway. He is smiling despite the fact that his son is in bed.  
Oh.


	4. we are ugly but we have the music

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Chelsea Hotel No.2 by Leonard Cohen, to prove that I know more songs than just Rufus Wainwright.  
> Final chapter! Sorry for the delay! I had stuff to do :(

The base is quieter now that the fighting has stopped. Finn is eating something pre-packaged, alone, when Poe comes around the corner, crutches at this stage nearly silent, his face again recognizable. It took a long time to come back from clinging to its bones; as it is he is still too sharp, his eyes still a little deeper, darker than they used to be. Finn is no longer alarmed to see him. Poe is no longer alarming to see.

“Hey,” he says, standing up and stretching. “How about this weather?”

It’s a joke; the rain is bouncing off the rooves of the outbuildings and the abandoned planes, loud against the corrugated roof, a dispersed waterfall in between the sheltered area they are standing in and the unusually dark late afternoon. The electric lamp shines with a yellow glow. It has the effect of making them appear jaundiced.

“Today is alright. We’ve just got good news.”

“Good news?”

Poe taps the side of his nose, but he’s smiling broadly.

“Need to know.” He says.

“We’re the same clearance level.”

Poe, still smiling, nods.

“I know. Organa wants you. She wants you there in the conference. We’re beaming everyone through, so it must be big.”

Finn perks up and reseals the silver bag his lunch came in. It’s still hot; he can feel the steam begin to puff the packaging out against his hands.

“Do you think they’ve agreed to talks?”  
“I can’t see what else it can be. Everything else is done, now. All their bases are empty, we know that for sure, and we got a file in last week that has them in a pretty bad situation, financially speaking.”

Finn doesn’t want to think about it. There has been a word bouncing around the edges of what he will allow himself to think, and he’s trying not to let it get in. He’s never been good at that, of course. It’s why he’s here and not there. But eventually “Ceasefire” will no longer be useful, because ceasefires are temporary things and maybe this will be a permanent one. Finn can’t imagine. If this isn’t what he thinks, he’ll be so disappointed…

 Poe is humming softly under his breath, the melody rusty. Finn nearly stops walking, mouth hanging open- it’s been so long since this has happened. Poe does not see the catch in Finn’s step, and continues, the rain a gentle percussion, the crutches keeping time. Poe’s face is turned to the corridor in front of them but he sometimes stumbles a bit, he’s going too fast, and then Finn grabs onto him and they laugh a bit and continue on down the long hallway, which is stretching on and on longer than it ever has before. There’s something driving them on, on, on, drums under their feet and, probably, trumpets somewhere overhead. Is the room at the end of this the point- the point where it will- “it”, that thing that they have been racing towards- is that a finish line?

Is the room at the end of this tunnel the place where they will begin using the phrase “hindsight is 20/20?” Is it the room from which they will try again to set firm foundations? Finn has been off planet pretty recently. He knows pretty well the grim feeling of the towns he has visited. Everyone is feeling what he is feeling. If we can get through this to the end, things will be better and we will be saved. But there were lots of people in the country towns who looked at where their modest temples had stood with a sense of complete despair; try to worship something and look what it gives us. I used to bribe my children to come to worship here. I would give them some money- a small amount of money and they used to think it was huge sums. They would take it in their hands- their hands were always sticky, and they would buy whatever they wanted after the service. They used to buy things I would never buy them and I could see they thought this was daring. They were so innocent! I heard it was a plane crash. Finn would nod and let them see his acknowledgment.

This is what we do to each other. We give ourselves to our children and love them more than we can picture. We help our friends, we would do anything for our family because they are good and beautiful; they make us happy in a pure, uncomplicated way. There is no guilt in loving our sons or our daughters; when they are small they trust us and in return we are their eyes, ears, interpreters; we hope that we instil in them a clear way of seeing. Our brothers, our sisters- by blood or experience; their hearts are our hearts and we hope that they know that. We can only hope that they know we gave the piece of ourselves they carry around with them willingly; that we would give them twice that if they asked. We are so capable of it, of this love that binds us like thread, that covers us like the blue night sky covers the small grassy hills of our fields. There is no more beautiful thing we can do; we have no other option; it is the only thing of which we have ever been capable. We must love each other, our families, our friends. All art comes from this fact, but even that never comes close to gathering up the seams of what loves makes us; not the violin or the painting or the words on the page. My children, they loved their daddy and that made me so happy to see that I thought I might die.

And then I sent them off to war. To die in ditches without me there, with only the thoughts of my husband and I- how could I have ever done that to them? What was so worth it that my children were an appropriate sacrifice? I thought we’d moved on from those days. I thought that by the time we saw that the suns stayed in the sky by themselves we would know that we do not have to give innocence to survive. My children killed another mother’s children. Did they wipe out a village like those other villagers wiped out ours? I raised them. Is that who I am? One was a teacher. Music. The other? Oh, I never knew what to do with him. He was going to go off to the city and find something more to learn. He said there were big changes about to come. He said that the crops we farmed were a- but good luck ever finding out what he meant. I never listened. I always thought I would have time to sit him down and talk, and find out what he meant. You never know them, not really, but I always thought I would have more time to- you know, after the last one, they rang the bells out over this village. I was only young, but it was really something. This time, if this thing ever ends, we don’t even have the bells anymore. A mother without children. What a joke.

+

When the General says, they’ve surrendered and we are at peace, there are indeed bells. There are shouts all over the deserted base; officials in red cloaks screaming because it’s done and they’ve won it and peace talks have a date and a plan and there will finally be agendas to create again, and new ways of ensuring peace, Peace, Peace, Peace, Peace!

Finn wishes Rey could see what she wanted so badly. But she’s gone. They will never find her. He will never see her again. She will never see the way that the screens went from red alert to situation normal. They all take a transport to the nearest port of administration and there is dancing in the streets, young people in the streets dancing and kissing and throwing away their uniforms, they walk around in their civilian clothes, which are all years out of style but nobody cares because fashion has not had time to move. Rey can’t see it. She’s so far away. And he thinks she was probably the last martyr for the cause, even though she is not dead.

But this is still- he is sad, yes, but this is still- there are surely trumpets, again, and now it is surely not time to overthink this! Now it’s time to say Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes- there will be books written about this day and I am young and in the middle of it and Peace and there is surely time for celebration here.

“You still have your lunch with you,” Poe says, pointing at Finn’s hand- and it’s true, this lunch has been to two planets now. That has not improved the taste. He lets it go to waste. He can do that today.

“I can’t believe it,” Finn says as quietly as he can over the roar of the streets. “I can’t believe that it’s over.”

Poe leans in and kisses him, letting the crutches fall; he puts his arms around him and leans on Finn’s shoulders, he kisses him and kisses him until their lips are numb, when they pull apart from each other they are both dazed. Poe is not smiling; he looks exhausted by it all.

“I should call my father” he says, “I have to talk to my father” they go back onto the ship and radio Kes; Poe sits for a short while and twists his hair around his shoulders, and for all his urgency he does not say much. The Poe After does not talk as much as before; he tends to the gesture now; he is at ease with touch so long as it is touch he initiates. Finn does not imagine he is happy. He does not think that for them happiness will ever come; Poe forgot it and had to relearn, and Finn missed the window when the concept would have been introduced; so at best they will only ever know an approximation of the term. The rest of their lives will be hard work for things that should come easy. They lie on a bench and Poe hums again. Finn only catches glimpses of the tune. People twist and sway to their own music. The night will be wild. The parties will be legendary. They will probably last for days. Finn knows that if they went to one, they wouldn’t have to open their wallets all evening. Peace!

Jess Pava sees them and from afar you’d swear she’d been struck by lightning.

“Holy Shit!” She grins, as she comes over, “it’s Poe Dameron! It’s Finn! How are you?”

Poe sits up, pulls her down and kisses her on the mouth. She laughs and pushes him away, sits down beside him, leans her head on his shoulder and Finn is almost jealous until Poe grabs his hand and flashes him a quick smile.

“Did you ever think this day would come?” She asks. Her voice feels like prosecco; he’s never seen her this loose.

“I had my doubts,” Poe says, “but you know, I always felt that it might.”

“I didn’t want to think it,” Finn says.

They sit in their semi silence, Finn wondering if Rey knows this is happening or if she is somewhere far removed from all of this action. Perhaps she sees it and thinks it meaningless. Finn doesn’t think so. He doesn’t think this is at all meaningless.

Peace! A new beginning, a chance to get it right, to learn again, to say never again- now it’s time for Peace, Peace, Peace!

“There’s a small thing for people on D’Qar tonight,” Jess says, getting up with a spring, leaving the bench a bit emptier than before, “It’ll be the last time, before we all have to do our own shit at home. Will you come? I found a guitar.”

Finn looks at Poe, deferring to his judgement.

“We’ll be there. Where is it?” He says, his face looking so old in the sunlight, but his eyes are steady, and his grip on Finn’s hand does not change.

+

It is difficult to picture a galaxy wide peace; the process will surely take years, if not decades. Finn has ideas that just might work; he has been enough places, talked to enough people, to know that this is an unrepeatable nightmare that must never happen again. The last treaty wasn’t worth the paper on which it was written. Everyone knew it, just nobody said anything about it. The effect: a numbness underneath the joy and a feeling in some people’s bones that never goes away.

Poe was a human and then he felt he wasn’t for a while and now he is again. For a while Finn was terrified the price of his coming home, real, and loving was his music, the way he would sing for no reason at the wrong times and the wrong places. For Finn that was the most revolutionary thing about him; the freedom that it is necessary to have to sing like that is huge. Poe never seemed to take it lightly. And yet after he got out of the place they kept him he never sang. He listened to music but Finn though it was as if there was none of it left inside him. Now, though, they are on a roof and the noise of the street is not exactly muted but it is softened. Behind them a huge sun is setting, and beside that a green moon, shining like a message. The light fills the planet, it seems, the yellow and the orange of the sky fading to a dusty lilac; the world far below of people who share a war. Poe’s fingers are becoming reacquainted with the fretboard. They pick out a tune that is not entirely sophisticated. It’s catchy, but nobody’s listening because they don’t know that this is the final act of the movie.

“Are you alright?” Finn asks, as Poe twiddles with the pegs, loosening them, deepening the sound to make it harmonise.

“Darling,” Poe says, and that’s a confession or a statement if ever Finn needed one. He sits on the dew damp roof and it quietens as Poe clears his throat.

“I’m out of practise,” he says. Finn feels like there is nothing in the world more or less true; perhaps he is out of practise but they have been in preparation for this- and all of a sudden The Peace is no longer surprising. Here is a group of young people who could have been sacrificed but weren’t; who could have died but instead lived; who are all owed and indebted so much that they may as well start the logbooks again. Peace has a way of being Loud at the start but now it is beginning to resonate in their starved chests, and they are all looking at the man who is about to sing.

Poe opens his mouth; everyone hears the breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's it, everyone! Thanks SO much to everyone who kept commenting and to those who left kudos! Guilt works as a motivational tool! (Insert joke about being raised Catholic here). If anyone wants to know what was going through my head as I wrote this last chapter, listen to The Armed Man (A Mass for Peace): X. Agnus Dei- it's on Spotify and although it is a Religious piece it's... you know, just give it a listen. Can't recommend highly enough, especially to sooth any pain that may be coming from the last week's political developments.


End file.
